Online TV boom
Seven and Nine are joining the unstoppable wave of online episodes of our favourite shows.
- Published by David Knox
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Seven and Nine are catching up to the ABC with plans to expand “catch-up” TV via their online portals Yahoo!7 and ninemsn.
Online streaming of full TV episodes at Yahoo!7 has seen a big increase recently.
“It’s quite stunning,” said Seven’s programming boss, Tim Worner told the Sydney Morning Herald. “It’s way, way over a million a month. I did not expect it to be as big or grow as fast as it has. Each month Yahoo!7 is breaking the records set the previous month for full episode streaming. We have reached a point of audience maturity where it is starting to make dollars and sense.”
Central to the success of free catch-up TV is a revenue model. Ninemsn is looking at a number of options for its expansion.
“I want the consumer to decide,” Ninemsn’s Joe Pollard said. “If we have a piece of long-form content on ninemsn, they can watch it with advertising to fund it or if they want it ad-free they can pay say $2.99 or take a subscription and watch as much as they like.
‘‘We will take as many Nine shows as we have rights to. Once the Warner deal kicks in with Channel Nine it will mean a big explosion in how many shows we will play.”
Nine broke with tradition when it offered its premiere episode of Sea Patrol online in 2007, ahead of its television debut.
TEN also offers a number of catch-up shows and segments of its favourites including Good News Week, Rush, Neighbours, The 7PM Project, Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? and Recruits.
SBS offers titles including Food Investigators, Food Safari, First Australians, Global Village, Bit of Black Business, mY Generation and Podlove.
ABC’s iView has enjoyed its first birthday with plans to expand unmetered access with more ISPs while Foxtel is on record as wanting to allow its subscribers to view content on screen, online and on mobiles.
So which of our network sites do you use to watch catch-up episodes?
Source: smh.com.au
29 Responses
Watching MasterChef was fantasticonline ! Excellent picture quality and streaming.
ABC takes the cake though with The Gruen Transfer andd the other excellent news ant current affairs programs.
i have only used these when something has gone wrong when trying to record. that doesn’t happen very often though, i think i’ve used the 10 and 7 ones once, never used 9’s and i’ve looked at iview but haven’t actually watched any of it. i will certainly use one of their legitimate sites rather than an illegal one if the option is available. i have used itunes for foxtel shows and paid for it but the price adds up very quickly if you want a whole season so unless they are talking like 10 or 20 cents per episode instead of $3 each, paying for it is not going to work. the price has to be quite miniscule for people to fork it out. going to their sites is the most convienient but people will go to the extra trouble to ensure they get it free, the price needs to be low enough that it is not worth the effort it takes to avoid paying it. i also agree that getting a file is much better than streaming, especially with the 7 one where you can’t even pause it without wrecking the streaming and having to start again.
Love iView, it helped me make my final decision in which ISP to go with when I updgraded to ADSL2+, picked one with unmetred. I’ve ended up watching shows I wasn’t watching FTA like Spooks and Beautiful People.
Every time I’ve tried to catchup on a missing episode on any other channel, I can never find it. Such a shame ABC can screen imported stuff but 10 & 7 can’t.
Media Watch is about 65mb per episode, so if you watch a couple of shows a week, obviously depending on the plan, it shouldn’t chew up too much bandwidth. It’s about 260mb per hour it works out to – although i’m only basing that on Media Watch. Although if you’re a hard core ABC online watcher, it might use a lot of data.
@Dyllip: Pretty much my thoughts aswell! It would almost be cheaper to go out and buy the show.
What I like about Iview is it’s unmetered for me, although because I don’t have a computer set up in a good place to watch video on it, I never used it.
I don’t even care for streaming it, I will download it and watch it at a later date when it suits me, or heaven for bid on the go. I tried to use Nine’s the other night as the PVR stuffed up and recorded the wrong station during the final off Sea Patrol, so I went to get it off the website, 10 minutes later I could only find partial episodes and went stuff it. I might have another try tonight just to make the wife happy.
This is completely useless to many that have small download quotas at bloated prices! Until unlimited internet is introduced in this country all IPTV and Video sites are useless, including Youtube, unless you want to suck up all your downloads watching a few Youtube videos and going over your cap and get slowed. This isn’t even mentioning the slow internet speeds in Australia. Hurry up national broadband network -.-
I don’t use iView due to my low bandwidth so I’m confined to eps of Media Watch – which is better anyway since DH conflicts with the Monday timeslot. And when I missed an ep of Rush this year I streamed the videos of the ep on TEN’s websites. But honestly I’d rather watch shows on TV anyway.
i’ve used iview several times and it is really easy to use. however, until the major telcos such as telstra and optus offer unmetered content, online tv will only be a niche market as broadband technology in this country is prehistoric.
Online tv has come a long way in the past few months.
Channel 7:
-updated home and away. packed to the rafters, both have good behind the scenes stuff / -very quick to put on the shows right after they air
-quality okay, but it stops and starts a lot, you have to let it buffer and then watch it otherwise its quite annoying / -the ad is quite annoying at the start / -does not split shows into 5 parts like ch10 and 9
Channel 10:
-updated a few hours later (I think 3 or so due to west coast time difference??)
-quality is okay aswell. loads faster than ch7 / -shows split into parts / -some shows dont work eg before the game
Channel 9:
-worst online tv out of the commercial networks / – slow, low quality . / -hard to navigate
-their old site was more user friendly than it is now / – reluctance to download their hiro software and the large files (350mb) / -ads annoying in between parts of their shows
so I think channel 10 and channel 7 are on the same level ~6-7 out of 10. but channel 9 is dreadful 4 out of 10
I don’t want to watch it “on line” … i want to be able to download it and watch at my convenience!
Idiot TV Execs need to retire and let younger people with a bit of intelligence take over … stop stuffing us around by changing times and dropping shows and you will keep an audience!
Jack!
As long as they put it up there with decent quality then I’ll watch it. Ten’s catch-up looks horribly pixellated on an HDTV. And before you say it, it is very achievable to have passable looking streaming shows (ala Hulu etc).
ive used the yahoo7 and ch10 catchup services. download quota isnt a problem with me, because im on an unlimited download plan. The problem is i never know when the episode is going to be avaliable online. ch7 have a come along way as of late. Earlier this year, an episode wouldnt be avaliable until the next afternoon. These days, episodes of H&A can be found by almost straight away! But i agree, id like to see not only the australian produced shows avaliable, but imports aswell. They used to put up the heroes episodes, so why not amazing race or ncis?
Make me pay for it, and im off. ch9, straight away they start talking about charging, what losers. And i must say, they have the worst website out of the big 3. Hard to navigate, not very informative, slow…
This is all good, but these online TV catchup services are completely useless to me until they can be added to my ISP’s unmetred content list. iView is the only one on it, and I have been enjoying iView. I wish the others would do the same.
I rarely need to catch up since I own a Tivo and just record whatever I miss. But on the odd occasion I have used the iView service and quite like it.
It would be great if Yahoo7 offer there online portal through Tivo that would get much more use than me going to the computer to watch.
I have only watched the first ten minutes of a Lipstick Jungle episode when Seven began it 10 minutes before it was scheduled. It was difficult to find on the site too. Cannot see myself resorting to it very often.
Nine’s “catch-up” TV offering will be known as “9online”.
If we can get this onto boxee I’ll be pleased. I’m seriously considering just buying a lcd screen and not bothering with a tv anymore.
ABC and TEN are by far the best in the country for catchup TV services. TEN just need to get permission to put some of their imported shows on catchup TV and I’ll be happy. 😛
ABC’s is perfect though.
I know it’s quite funny, that Worner and these execs are just waking up to what has been common place in the UK and US for years, and what the customer actually wants. And yes guys, there is massive amounts of revenue to be made here! (That can be re-invested in more original programming)
Guess what. Not everyone can or wants to sit down and watch shows at 7.30, 8.30 and 9.30. Buy putting them online – you give consumers the chance to see your product when it suits them. And these are often new viewers to shows, not lost viewers from your shows. It builds audiences for shows.
Gone are the days when you can force people to watch shows when they are on. People want choice. Now these websites just need to make the full episodes feature easier to find and more prominent on their sites.
I’ve been watching iView unmetered for a year now and it’s changed my viewing habits. It’s allowed me to watch more TV which is something networks should sit up and take notice of.
The only thing constraining my use of other networks services is the fact that all of the content they provide is metered and demolishes my monthly download quota. If free to air networks want to expans these services they have to realise that money is the key factor in driving up-take. More people will naturally use a free service over a user pays system any day.
I think the networks are missing a huge revenue opportunity here- if they leave the majority of their ads in the program for catch up (minues time specific ads) and provide an unmetered service, they can in turn charge more for advertising spots as they will be seen an infinite number of times. Watch the dollars roll in when you provide a multi platform package to an agency!
Wow! Internets!!
Really? Crusty old TV execs have just turned on a computer huh. Heard of Hulu?
““If we have a piece of long-form content on ninemsn, they can watch it with advertising to fund it or if they want it ad-free they can pay say $2.99 or take a subscription and watch as much as they like.”
I am not watching anything on the 9 site if I have to pay for it.
I’ve used iView but in the main stayed away from the others for 2 main reasons. First easy of use, iView wins hands down but more importantly I get iView unmetered unlike the catch up TV services the others offer.
““It’s quite stunning,” said Seven’s programming boss, Tim Worner told the Sydney Morning Herald. “It’s way, way over a million a month. I did not expect it to be as big or grow as fast as it has.”
Wow just goes to show how backward TV execs are in Australia. They have no idea what the customer wants!